Episode 3: Divorce in Michigan: What to Expect and What to Do First

Kevin Kohlert
Welcome to the Kelly & Kelly Law Podcast. My name is Kevin and today I’m joined by attorney, Ryan Kelly, the head of the Family Law Department here at Kelly & Kelly PC. Hello, Ryan.

Ryan Kelly
Hey, Kevin, how are you?

Kevin
I’m doing great. How about you?

Ryan
Wonderful.

Kevin
Awesome, glad we were able to, it took a while to get a appointment with you. I know how busy and crazy everything is, so I’m excited.

Ryan
I’m excited about doing my first podcast.

Kevin
Absolutely, so today’s episode, we’ll be talking about what you should do when you’re going through a divorce in Michigan. It’s a time that can feel obviously overwhelming, emotional and uncertain, and knowing your rights and the processes can help somebody move forward. So let’s start right away, just like what happens immediately after a divorce is filed or someone is served?

Ryan
Yeah, so if you get served with divorce papers from your spouse or the other party, then it’s really important that you act very quickly because there are timeframes that start ticking from the minute that you have those papers in your hand.

It’s typically 21 days is a good rule of thumb, although it might be 28 in some circumstances, but you wanna make sure that you’re immediately seeking the advice of a qualified family law attorney to help you through that process.

It’s kind of hard because people think that there’s going to be all of these magical things happening right after they file for divorce, but really it’s initiating the process, so that way you have the protection of the court or the protection of certain asset restraining orders, or status co-orders, to help keep the marital estate and your household intact, while you figure out what the divorce actually looks like.

Kevin
That makes sense. When someone is served, does that mean somebody has to move out of the house or be separated from the kids or anything like that?

Ryan
Usually not. So there may be a compelling circumstance where somebody is forced out of the home or they are restricted from their children. Those are typically emergency situations, but setting those aside because those have pretty particular circumstances, most of the time, as crazy as it is to think about, the court’s going to expect that everybody can live peacefully and harmoniously in their house together.

And there’s a benefit to that. The benefit to that is that you have that regular access to your kids while you’re going through the divorce. There’s a benefit that you don’t need to go get an additional housing place that can have a big financial stress and a big financial burden when you’re already dealing with all these other issues. And then also you don’t have to deal with dividing of all of your stuff and your things, your records and your papers.

But I will say that the court does expect that people can behave appropriately during the divorce. So if somebody is not acting right or there is a safety concern, then you definitely want to be speaking with your attorney and maybe petitioning the court to get somebody out of the house or to give you
exclusive use of the house.

Kevin
Yeah, I can see that. Not removing someone unless there was an extreme circumstance like there was violence and threats involved. I can see that.

Ryan
Yeah, and you want to make sure that everybody is safe and is appropriate in the house as well. And there’s a lot of uncertainties in the divorce. So you also, if somebody moves out, which sometimes has to happen, right? We all know every divorce can’t proceed just without issue. Sometimes somebody has to move out.

Then we need to talk about how are the bills going to be paid? What are we going to do with paychecks? How are we going to handle parenting time with the kids? And if we have to deal with those things because there’s a safety concern, then we can deal with them. It just sometimes we don’t want to have to have that additional expense when we’re going through the contested divorce.

Kevin
That makes sense. And what should somebody avoid saying or doing during a divorce? Now we’re in the age of social media and text messages. I’ve seen my share of publicize divorces on Facebook.

Ryan
You know, you’re right. And it’s funny these to say like dance like no one is watching, we as family law attorneys say like text, like it’s going to be read on a screen in court, right? Expect that the other person is documenting things. And if you have to explain a text message that’s popped up on the screen in front of the judge and you’ve said horrible things to your co-parent or your spouse, you better have a good explanation for that.

So that is not the time to get into big fights with your spouse. It’s not the time to be manipulative, abusive, aggressive, demeaning, not the time to call them every name in the book. And then the other thing to think about is this is a private family situation. And the goal is to keep it exactly that.

Does every neighbor, does every Facebook group, does every Instagram, or fraternity that you went to in college need to know every dirty detail of your divorce? I hope not because you never know who’s going to intercept that information and how it’s going to be used. And you’d really hate for your kids, especially our teenagers that are so good at Googling and finding things to see their parent talking terribly about the other parent on social media.

Kevin
That’s good advice. Text like somebody is going to read it because in many cases it probably is. I mean, text messages are admissible in court, right?

Ryan
Absolutely. And your social media posts. I mean, when it first started and people were getting text messages, the judge was like, what am I supposed to do with these? But now they’re much more reliable to be able to be shown in court. And you want to be able to present yourself as your best self, even though you’re dealing with a personal fallout, you also don’t want to overly involve your kids in this situation, right? Your kids are going to go through their own process of how they feel about the divorce. And that’s going to be tough on them.

The goal is to keep our kids at the forefront of all of our decisions. So we shouldn’t be saying things to them about, oh, “I filed for divorce. You’re never going to see your dad again. I’ve got the best lawyer in the state of Michigan, Kelly & Kelly,” those are not things that we should be saying to our children, even if they are true.

Kevin
That’s good advice.

Does somebody need a lawyer if it’s an uncontested divorce, if everything is very amicable?

Ryan
So I think it’s always great when people are amicable. And the benefit to that is that it really reduces the costs and the uncertainty of litigation.

But they should really think about at least consulting with a family law attorney, even if you were excellent at your job at what you do every day, if you are a surgeon, if you are a garbage man, if you are a plumber, you probably are not a trained attorney with the experience of knowing what happens in family court.

And we hate situations where somebody thinks that everything is amicable. They do the documents, they finalize everything, and they goof something up. And they find out years later when they’re going to qualify for a refinance, or they are remarried, that they made a mistake in that paperwork because
they thought that they could get it taken care of without getting an attorney. It’s really important to get that advice and make sure that you’ve got everything done correctly.

Kevin
That’s good advice. It’s a very big decision that’s very impactful of your life. So it’s well worth it to have a lawyer look over things.

Ryan
Right, do you do your own cavities? Do you do your own taxes? Do you do your own internet marketing? I don’t, so let somebody else do it, that’s trained to do it.

Kevin
That’s fair. And on the other side of the, on the flip side of the coin, what is a high conflict divorce?

Ryan
So a high conflict divorce is a term thrown out a lot. Really, a high conflict divorce should be that way because of the issues that the parties have, not because of the attorneys, and not because of issues that the attorneys are creating. So that’s the first thing. When I say I handle high conflict cases, that doesn’t mean that myself or a member of my team is making this case more difficult. But high conflict cases are typically those cases that have more sensitive issues than a typical divorce. And maybe, you know, maybe even using the term “typical divorce” isn’t great, but they have high issues on child custody. Perhaps they have an issue with a child that has special needs or there is a mental health disorder or substance abuse issue. Something that really makes the situation have to be more challenging because of the complexities related to it.

But it’s our goal as the attorneys, even when it’s a high conflict situation, to try to reduce the conflict in the sense that the attorney shouldn’t be fighting, right? That shouldn’t be happening. We’ve got to help the people get to a resolution on the other end of this case.

Kevin
That makes sense.

And how could a family law attorney at Kelly and Kelly help?

Ryan
Yeah, great question. So we have a wonderful team here that is highly skilled and experienced in family law matters. Our family law team, all we do is family law. We have other departments of our office here that do other things. We may rely on them for help or assistance in a criminal matter or in an estate planning matter. But our family law team focuses every day on issues related to family law. That is the training that we take. That’s the continuing education that we take. We know the judges, we know the opposing counsel, and we’re highly experienced in helping people get to that resolution.

Something we really, really pride ourselves on here is being really honest with our clients, being very communicative with our clients, and still maintaining that high level of advocacy and service.

Kevin
Well, nobody ever wants to go through a divorce, but God forbid if somebody is, Ryan is the one you want on your side.

That’s Ryan Kelly, at Kelly & Kelly.

And until next time, thank you very much, Ryan.

Ryan
Thanks, Kevin. This was a lot of fun.

I look forward to the next one.

Kevin
Likewise.